Unusual Diego Rivera Work Restored in Mexico CityMurals by Mexican artist Diego Rivera can be found all over the world, but some of his most unusual works are in Mexico City. There, a recently renovated fountain doubles as a municipal water pumping station, revealing Rivera's skills as both a sculptor and architect.

An exhibit of Mexican muralist Diego Rivera's work recently opened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He also painted in San Francisco, Detroit, Europe, the Soviet Union, but some of his most unusual works remain in Mexico City.

NPR's Jason Beaubien has this report from the Mexican capital.

JASON BEAUBIEN, BYLINE: Mexico City houses some of Diego Rivera's most famous murals, but it's also home to many lesser-known projects by this prolific artist. His best known works in the Mexican capital are murals at the National Palace and the Palace of Fine Arts. These include a re-creation of his controversial "Man at the Crossroads" at Rockefeller Center, which Nelson Rockefeller ordered destroyed in 1934, after Rivera slipped in a portrait of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin.

Here in Mexico City, Rivera did far more than just paint. He collected pre-Hispanic pottery and indigenous folk art. And he experimented with sculpture and architecture.

Between 1950 and 1952, Rivera built a giant tiled fountain to the Aztec rain god Tlaloc, as part of an overhaul of Mexico City's municipal water system.

LILIA HAUA: It's a very special fountain. It's one of the most important sculptures that Diego Rivera did in his life.

BEAUBIEN: Lilia Haua is with Probosque Chapultepec which helped raise money to restore this work by Rivera. The fountain and murals here had fallen into disrepair, and until a year ago were closed to the public for more than a decade.

HAUA: The fountain was completely destroyed so we tried to make it as nicer as we can do it, always respecting the style and what Diego Rivera did.

BEAUBIEN: The fountain is basically a shallow pool more than a hundred feet long and a hundred feet wide. Originally it served as the ceremonial entry point for water from the Lerma River into the city's main reservoirs. The main flow of water has now been diverted into a pipe. But in Rivera's sculpture the rain god, Tlaloc, still lies on his back in the pool.

HAUA: In the beginning, the water was coming through Tlaloc's face under his mouth. And then, the water was coming up to here to the Carcamo.

BEAUBIEN: The Carcamo is a giant tank inside a rotunda that's part of the same complex. Until the 1990s municipal water flowed into the tank, and from here technicians could control the levels in several large reservoirs.

Rivera painted the entire cement tank, including the floor, in elaborate, colorful scenes. The flow of water however not only covered much of the murals, it was also destroying them. So the water is no longer there. It's been diverted.

(SOUNDBITE OF A PIPE ORGAN)

BEAUBIEN: To replace the sound of the missing stream, there's now a new and unexpected element: a pipe organ. It rumbles and changes tone based on the flow of water through the adjacent municipal pipes.

(SOUNDBITE OF A PIPE ORGAN)

BEAUBIEN: Lilia Haua notes that Rivera viewed water as a social issue and an element essential to life.

HAUA: On this side, we can see a beautiful wall, a beautiful painting, and he's talking about the origin of life and the importance of the fertility. But everything is related with importance of the water.

BEAUBIEN: More than a half a century after his death, Diego Rivera still has a strong presence in the Mexican capital. A huge mural made of tiny bits of tile stretches across the front of the Insurgentes Theater. Another one of his sculptures covers the entire front of the soccer stadium at the National Autonomous University.

The Blue House of his wife Frida Kahlo is more famous and attracts far more visitors, but Rivera left behind two houses in the south of Mexico City. One is a stark modernist structure that was way ahead of its time in the 1920s. The other is a giant pyramid made of black volcanic rock. One critic referred to its style as Soviet/Aztec.

His iconic murals still grace the walls not only of museums but of schools, hospitals and government buildings. His chubby face has even turned up on the new 500 peso Mexican bank note.

And now, with his project at the municipal pumping station restored, his work once again gazes over the water before it flows out into the Mexican capital.

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